


this two star town

by smilebackwards



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: Magnus has been in Edom for eighty six days when he hears Alec’s voice.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 39
Kudos: 306





	this two star town

Magnus has been in Edom for eighty six days when he hears Alec’s voice.

It can’t be anything but a dream, but when Magnus dreams about Alec they’re in New York or Tokyo or Spain. He doesn’t bring Alec to Hell with him.

“Magnus,” Alec calls again, and then he’s bursting through the doorway of Magnus’s father’s house. There are deep circles under his eyes. He looks like he’s lost a good ten pounds in weight. He’s beautiful.

Magnus doesn’t remember running but somehow he’s across the room and in Alec’s arms, clinging. Alec holds him back just as tight, his fingers welded to Magnus’s shoulder blades. 

“Alexander,” Magnus breathes, even though he feels breathless. “How?”

Alec steps back out of his arms and Magnus hears himself make a sad, pathetic noise. Alec smiles and kisses him, hands a frame around Magnus’s face, and then he lifts the hem of his shirt. There’s a new line of runes etched across Alec’s abdomen: grace, hope, love.

Magnus traces their dark, overlapping curves. It shouldn’t be enough. _What else,_ Magnus thinks, terrified. _What else did you trade away?_ He has too much proof of Alec’s conviction. But it’s been eighty six days, eighty six days of heat lightning and loneliness, and Alec is warm beneath Magnus’s hands. There are tears clinging to his lashes, and Magnus loves him. 

“Take me to bed,” Alec says. “Please.”

Magnus presses a kiss to the dip of Alec’s throat. “Always so polite, darling.”

Magnus’s bed in Edom is a ruin of a thing, canopied in red velvet. He knows Alec couldn’t care less but he feels suddenly embarrassed by the faded furniture and guttering candles of his father’s house. It takes almost all of Magnus’s magic to hold the rift closed; he hasn’t had power to spare to redecorate. Alec deserves the comfortable chaos of their Brooklyn loft, the king size bed and the golden sheets that look so good against his skin.

But even fraying velvet looks good when it’s a backdrop for Alec’s bared chest, the dark fall of his hair, the curve of his beloved smile. Magnus presses Alec’s hands up over his head, their fingers intertwined. The silver rings on their fingers match up perfectly. Magnus makes love to him slowly, the goodbye they didn’t get to have. 

“Magnus,” Alec whispers, over and over and over.

There’s no morning in Edom. No morning and no night. Magnus marks the days by the quick, faint shift of the sky from red to purple, but in between, time is hard to judge. Magnus thinks it’s been hours, precious hours that he never thought he’d have again, not with Alec. They’re curved toward each other on the bed like parentheses and Magnus is tracing protection symbols against Alec’s skin. There’s a new scar following along Alec’s ribs. How many battles has he fought in eighty six days? Magnus wonders. Is he being taken care of?

Alec stretches languorously and the sheets slip down to his hips. His runes look like a wound. The fresh black ink has faded away, replaced by raw, reddened skin. Magnus runs a finger, feather-light, across the sharp tip of love and Alec hisses in a pained breath.

“Darling,” Magnus says. He presses a kiss over Alec’s closed eyelids. Left and then right. “It’s time for you to go home.”

Alec’s eyes flash open. “No,” he says, pleading. “No, Magnus, I can stay.”

“You can’t,” Magnus says, gentle. It feels like he’s breaking both their hearts but it’s only the truth. Alec can’t stay here. He can’t _live_ here. His very blood is slowly boiling, angelic and antithetical to everything in Edom. 

“I love you, Alexander,” Magnus says, and opens the rift, just a crack. Just enough for Alec to go home without all of Hell following with him.

“I love you, too,” Alec says, his voice choking. And then he’s gone.

-

It’s foolish to hope, Magnus thinks, as the days continue to pass. But it’s also foolish to underestimate Alexander Lightwood. When Magnus hears Alec calling his name, this time he doesn’t disbelieve. 

Magnus meets him at the threshold and Alec just has time to drop the backpack he’s carrying from his shoulders before Magnus is wrapped around him, tight. “Darling, tell me everything I’ve missed,” he says, pressing kisses across Alec’s face. “Well, hit the high points I mean. We only have a few hours.”

Alec shakes his head. “Lorenzo promised me three days,” he says, holding out his arm. There’s a cuff of bronze around Alec’s left wrist, so soaked in magic that Magnus can see it's burning aura with the naked eye. 

Magnus can feel his eyes welling. Three _days._ It might have sounded paltry to him once but it sounds like practically forever now. 

Alec leans down to pick up the bag he unceremoniously dropped to catch Magnus in his arms. “I brought you things,” he says, beaming, and then he starts loading said things into Magnus’s arms: the warm throw blanket from their couch, his favorite soft sweater, his favorite soft sweater of _Alec’s_ , half a dozen books from the endless ‘to read’ pile Magnus keeps on his desk. 

Alec sets something aside on one of the dusty chairs; a thick manila envelope held closed with a loop of string. “What’s that?” Magnus asks, curious.

Alec looks at him and then away. “That’s for when I’m gone.” 

“Ouch,” Magnus says, more in shock than pain when the next thing Alec hands him pokes his arm with hard bristles. Alec stands up and takes it from him, telescoping the end out into— “A broom,” Magnus says. “You brought me a broom.”

“Yes,” Alec says decisively.

Magnus snorts out a laugh. “Be still, my beating heart.”

“You shouldn’t have to live like this,” Alec says earnestly, looking around at all the dark, depressing corners of Magnus’s father’s house. Magnus should really stop calling it that; it’s his house now, for whatever that’s worth. 

And that’s how they spend the next few hours sweeping away cobwebs and beating red dust settled centuries deep out of the faded old furniture instead of having sex. At least Alec takes off his shirt, even if he ends up using it for a dust rag. 

“This is incredibly sexy,” Magnus teases, but he’s honestly touched. It’s like the odd domestic chores he used to cherish: Alec’s insistence on hand washing their dishes, making breakfast in the mornings with the weak sunlight coming in off the balcony. Alec makes everything around Magnus feel brighter. 

Alec grins back. “We’ll use the sheets once they’ve finished airing out.”

“Promises, promises, darling,” Magnus says but, of course, Alec always keeps his promises.

“We could keep the candles,” Alec says, when they’re laid back in bed, exhausted and sated. “They’re a little romantic, right?”

“There’s a certain...ambiance,” Magnus allows, although he’s not sure he’d call that ambiance romantic. 

There’s so much more than this that he wants to give to Alec. There are no bakeries in Edom for Magnus to steal croissants from. There’s not much of anything. Small, shrivel-skinned fruits and hard crusted bread. He wants to take Alec to his favorite restaurant in Florence, watch him eat tiramisu like it’s an orgasmic experience. Magnus wants Alec to have all the things he deserves.

Alec looks up through the missing roof at the fire-orange sky, all the freewheeling dragon demons with their hook-clawed wings cutting across the horizon, and says, “It’s like sunset all the time.”

Magnus closes his eyes. _Stop,_ he wants to say. _I don’t want to trap you here with me. You don’t have to find ways to make it okay._ But he doesn’t want to say it. Magnus has never been enough for anyone. That Alec would look at Edom in all its disgrace and try to find beauty in it, try to call it home just because Magnus is here, that’s more than he ever thought he’d have.

“I’ll find a way,” Alec says, his head tucked close into Magnus’s shoulder. “I’ll find a way to stay.”

Three days slip by like nothing. Magnus watches the magic fade from Alec’s wrist cuff like sand sliding through an hourglass.

Alec shrugs his empty backpack onto his shoulders. “Do,” he swallows. It sounds painfully dry. “Do you want me to bring anything else when I come back?”

Magnus puts a hand to Alec’s cheek. “Just yourself, darling,” he says. “That’s always enough.”

-

The envelope Alec left him is heavy and produces a vague rattling noise when shaken. Magnus unwinds the string and reaches in to extract the contents. 

There’s a journal on top, full of blank pages. Paperclipped carefully to the first page is the photostrip Magnus and Alec had taken in Tokyo. Magnus traces a reverent finger along the curve of Alec’s jaw.

The rattling proves to be a jumble of pens, cheap black ballpoints from Alec’s office in the Institute and one respectable fountain pen that Magnus keeps on the desk in the library. Magnus sets them aside and pulls out a thick packet of pages filled with Alec’s crisp, no-nonsense print. Each page is dated at the top right, in chronological order starting from the twenty second of June. A letter for every day. 

Magnus swallows around the lump in his throat.

He should ration them out, read one day at a time, but Magnus tears through them like a starving man. Alec told him the highlights during his visit but it’s different to read it day by day, all the petty inconveniences and small joys Alec has probably already half-forgotten.

There are three days missing in September and Magnus’s heart skips a beat. 

_Magnus,_ Alec writes when the dates start again, his penmanship worryingly shaky, _I promise I didn’t forget you. Not for a single day. They wouldn’t let me have a fucking pen in the infirmary. Everything’s fine. There was a shax demon that clipped me but I got it. Which I guess means it’s probably down in Edom with you now. Fuck. Sorry about that. I love you._

 _I love you,_ Alec writes at the end of every letter. _I love you. I love you. I love you._

-

The rift looks smaller.

Magnus ought to know. He spends enough time staring at it, the cursed barrier holding him away from Alec. The edges look shorter, hemmed in like they’ve been sewn shut. 

Magnus can feel that something’s different. It’s like he’s been carrying an almost unbearable weight and, sudden and unexpectedly, a brick has been lifted from the load. For the first time in a long time, he has enough magic to spare for small spells like replacing the candles and refilling the ink in his fountain pen.

He’s almost filled the blank journal Alec left him. A letter every day. There isn’t much to say for Edom but Magnus has a thousand stories still to tell Alec. Half of them are even true. And there’s plenty to plan for the wedding. 

_I quite like the Taj Mahal for a venue, darling,_ Magnus writes, _but it’s your choice. I can take us anywhere except Peru. You’ll want a tux. Give Giovanni at the shop on 42nd my name and he’ll set you up beautifully. There’s nothing that wouldn’t look beautiful on you. Darling, I miss you terribly. I love you. I love you. I love you._

-

“Magnus,” Alec says, softly, and Magnus springs awake.

“Alexander,” Magnus says, reaching up to pull Alec down toward him on the bed.

Alec loses his balance and falls gracelessly on top of him, laughing. It’s wonderful. “Magnus,” Alec says, a preface to something else that Magnus swallows with his mouth. 

He twists them so he’s on top and kisses Alec for all he’s worth. “Do we have three days?”

“Rather more than that we hope,” Lorenzo says, dryly. 

Magnus almost lets out an undignified scream. “What are _you_ doing here?” he asks. He shifts enough to let Alec sit up but doesn’t let go of his hand. 

Lorenzo raises an eyebrow. “I am here at Mr. Lightwood’s request.”

Alec squeezes Magnus’s hand. “Clary made us a new rune,” he says, rolling up his sleeve to show Biscuit’s distinct, artistic script. It’s an odd configuration for a rune. Two fully separate glyphs: an embellished letter p set to the left of of a strangely hooked m. But Magnus doesn’t really care what it looks like if it means he gets to keep Alec longer. 

“It’s called Alliance,” Alec adds. “It lets Lorenzo and I share powers.” Alec snaps his fingers and there’s a shimmer of yellow magic. 

Magnus feels his breath catch. Alec with magic. Alec with _immortality._ It’s an impossible dream, but Magnus has a lot of those lately. 

“Can she use it on us?” Alec would look better in blue. He’d look better with Magnus’s power settled snug around his body, a comfort and a shield.

“There was a lot of angelic resistance when she was drawing it,” Alec says, shaking his head. “She was only able to draw it on Lorenzo and I but she said she’d keep trying.”

“How long will it last?” Magnus asks.

Alec looks up at Lorenzo. “I’m quite certain it will hold for at least a week,” Lorenzo says. “I intend to go visit my father. I’ll leave the two of you to your reunions.”

“Thank you,” Alec says, ungrudgingly, and Lorenzo nods, an almost warm look in his eyes. Magnus feels an odd skip in his heart. Here’s one more thing he’s missed; the shift in their relationship to allies, perhaps even friends. Alec’s letters had held no few references to Lorenzo. 

Alec wraps his arms around Magnus and Magnus lets himself rest his chin on Alec’s shoulder. His hair smells like the sad, cheap Institute soap again. He’s probably run out of the sandalwood shampoo in their bathroom by now. Magnus turns his face to press a kiss to Alec’s neck, over his deflect rune. “I’ve missed you terribly, darling,” he says.

“I miss you, too,” Alec says. His voice is soft and pained and Magnus hates it. He presses another soft kiss to the curve of Alec’s shoulder. 

Alec leans back and the look on his face isn’t what Magnus imagined it would be. It’s Alec’s warrior face now, fierce and determined and brave. “We’re fixing the rift,” Alec says. “Can you see it? The warlocks have closed half a mile since October.”

“I— _yes_ ,” Magnus says. His magic has been trickling back for months. “What do you mean they’re closing it? How?”

“From Alicante,” Alec says. “There was a spell in the Book of the White. _Spatium medeor._ Catarina says it's like some of her healing spells, but it works on magic, not people.” 

“Warlocks are being allowed into Idris?” Magnus asks.

Alec nods. “We’re there all the time now. It takes so much power to heal over even a tiny section, Magnus. I don’t understand how you’re still able to hold it closed.”

Magnus puts a hand to Alec’s cheek. “I’m really very motivated.” He dreams sometimes about losing his grasp on the magic, about demons seeking his father’s throne coming to distract his focus. He dreams about the dragon-demons slipping through, raining fire back down on Alicante, and Alec at the front lines, his bow pointed toward the sky. Magnus won’t let that happen again.

Color rises in Alec’s cheeks and Magnus feels the wave of fondness that’s so common whenever he looks at Alec.

Alec lets out a jaw-cracking yawn. “Sorry,” he says. He looks so tired. Some of the weight Magnus noticed lost from his frame after that first visit is back but the circles under his eyes haven’t retreated. 

“Go to sleep, Alexander,” Magnus says, pressing Alec back toward the pillows. 

“No,” Alec says, indignant. “Magnus, I’m not going to waste the little time we have together _sleeping_.”

“It’s not a waste, darling,” Magnus says. “I’ll still get to hold you.” He settles along the curve of Alec’s back, his arm slung over Alec’s hip.

Alec softens. “Promise you’ll wake me in an hour?” he says, but he’s already half asleep and hours aren’t a thing in Edom in any case. Magnus doesn’t feel guilty for letting him get the rest he’s obviously been missing. Magnus doesn’t sleep well without Alec either.

Magnus is almost dozing himself when he hears a muffled sound at the threshold. He goes instantly alert, slipping off the bed. He probably has enough magic for a fire spell if he needs it.

Lorenzo walks through the doorway and Magnus lets himself relax. “Visiting my father was perhaps not the best idea,” Lorenzo says delicately. His jacket is askew and he shifts his shoulders, straightening it. 

Magnus can sympathize with that at least. He waves a hand and the bed hangings drape down to cover Alec from view. Alec has never much liked being looked at by anyone who isn’t Magnus. 

“Why did you come to Edom, Lorenzo?” Magnus asks. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Lorenzo cuts a look toward the bed. “Say what you will about Shadowhunters,” he says, “no one really enjoys seeing an angel weep.” 

Magnus feels his heart clench. He never wants Alec to be unhappy.

“And besides,” Lorenzo says, “it’s only my duty as a member of the warlock community. Everyone’s quite come together for you. And for the astronomical consulting fees Alec negotiated of course.” 

“The Clave is paying for warlocks to close the rift?” Magnus asks, skeptical. He’s still shocked they’re allowing warlocks into Idris at all, let alone opening the purse strings to pay them for work Magnus is already doing.

“It’s not altruism by any means,” Lorenzo scoffs. “The Clave is grateful to you certainly, but they don’t expect you to stay here. In their minds, you might decide you’ve had enough of Edom any day now and they’ll be right back where they started, with all of Alicante in flames.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t complain when their lack of faith is working so entirely in my favor.”

“Quite,” Lorenzo says. “And I have my eye on a new summer house in Ibiza. I’ll even let you and Alec have it for a season every so often. A finder’s fee if you will.”

“Your generosity is enormous,” Magnus says, rolling his eyes. “As if I’d be able to convince Alec to take a month away from his duties as Head of Institute let alone a season.”

“But he’s not— oh,” Lorenzo stops. “You haven’t spoken about it yet.” A year ago he would have looked smug. It would have been a dig at Magnus, not a conversational faux pas. 

“Alexander’s not what?” Magnus asks, a cold feeling growing in his chest. _We’re there all the time now,_ Alec had said about Alicante, but Magnus hadn’t thought what that might mean. 

“He was reassigned as the liaison for the rift closure,” Lorenzo says. “They certainly couldn’t have chosen anyone more motivated.”

Magnus has to sit down. Alec spent his whole life training to be Head of the New York Institute and now he’s what? Staring at a hole in the sky all day? His life so little different from Magnus’s in Edom?

“He isn’t in mourning for it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lorenzo says. He looks like he might be considering putting a hand on Magnus’s shoulder before he thinks better of it. “Alec handed the title down to Isabelle and threw himself into spells research as if he were an acolyte in the Spiral Labyrinth. I half expect him to manifest a warlock mark any day now.”

Magnus can’t talk about this anymore. “Thank you, Lorenzo,” he says, woodenly. “There’s a hot spring on the lower level if you’d like.” It’s the only hospitality he can really offer. Edom isn’t a comfortable place. 

Lorenzo hums. “Very well. I’ll see you later, Magnus.”

-

“You let me sleep, didn’t you?” Alec says, turning his face against Magnus’s hip.

Magnus doesn’t say anything. He’s halfway through Alec’s new batch of letters. Alec stepped down as Head of the New York Institute on October 5th. It’s right there in black and white, written down as simply and easily as Alec’s decision that he wants edelweiss and forget-me-nots as their wedding flowers and his enthusiasm for pancake day in the cafeteria. It isn’t as if he was going to hide it from Magnus. 

Alec sits up. “How far are you?” he asks, quietly.

Magnus hands him the letter. 

“I wasn’t doing a good job, Magnus,” Alec says. “I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think of anything except you. Izzy kept finding me passed out asleep over your spell books.” Alec takes Magnus’s face in his hands and says, seriously, “Magnus, Izzy and _Jace_ were writing _my_ reports.”

Magnus snorts out an accidental laugh. 

Alec smiles. “Izzy’s doing a great job as Head,” he says proudly, “and I’m doing a good job too.” He leans across Magnus and pulls a thick ledger out of the bottom of his backpack. Magnus already sorted through it for his treasures: chocolate and photographs and his best palette of eye shadows, the tantalizing mystery of a sealed envelope. It’s ridiculously endearing, his angel making care packages for him.

Alec opens the ledger to a page with a list of names alongside a column full of mundane dollar signs and the occasional ‘sixteen Burmese rubies’ or ‘an apology from Katryn Greenfallow’. “I recruited all the best warlocks to work on the rift,” Alec says.

“Anton Crews,” Magnus scoffs, his finger trailing down the list. “Debatable.” Crews may have been High Warlock of Chicago during a particularly enjoyable stretch of the 1920s but he’d been an unrepentant dick about it.

“Shut up, I know you hate him but he’s powerful,” Alec says. He turns a few pages to show a row of dates and measurements. “Everyone’s starting to get really good with the spell. The first few weeks we were only healing inches every day, now it’s meters.” 

“Darling, I have a sudden pressing need to see you in glasses,” Magnus says. Black frames, Magnus thinks. Very sexy accountant.

Alec gives him a lopsided smile. “Shadowhunters have 20/10 vision, Magnus, but yeah, I’ll see what I can do for you.”

Magnus has to kiss him. “How long will it take?” Magnus says, his lips moving to Alec’s neck. “How long until I can come home to you, Alexander?”

Alec’s breath hitches. “Fourteen months.”

It’s so much better than forever but Magnus still feels pierced through the heart. Fourteen _months._ “What if I work on it from my side too?” he says. 

Alec stares at him. “Could you do that?” 

There’s so much hope in his eyes the only answer Magnus could ever give is, “Yes.” 

The smile that overtakes Alec’s face is everything Magnus wants for the rest of his immortal life. “Here, take my copy of the spell,” Alec says. He flips to the back of the ledger and tears out a page. 

Magnus reads it carefully. He twists his wrist in a circular motion, deliberate and grandiose, and lets the magic flow. Magnus watches Alec watch the sky, the way his smile blooms across his lips. “Put me down in your book, darling. I’ll be home to you in no time.”

-

By the time Alec has been in Edom for eight days, his skin feels hot with fever. Magnus thinks Alec would argue that he’s fine, but Lorenzo looks like he might keel over at any moment and Alec has always had pity for everyone but himself.

Alec cups his hands beneath Magnus’s jaw. “It’s only Edom,” he says, and his smile is so strong for all that it’s trembling. “I’ll always come back.”

-

“We’re so close, Magnus,” Alec says. 

Lorenzo isn’t with him. There’s no brass cuff circling his wrist. They only have hours again, just like the first time. But maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s enough if this is the _last_ time. The rift is so small now, a papercut across the sky instead of a gaping maw.

Magnus presses Alec down into the mattress. He knows exactly what Alec wants; Alec told him in so many words. 

Magnus isn’t sure what he expected when he unsealed the envelope Alec left him but it hadn’t been to see the words _I miss your body. Your hands, your shoulders, your skin,_ Alec’s practical, businesslike penmanship gone shaky with emotion or haste or both. 

_I want,_ Alec wrote, a list that read like poetry, by turns stumbling and scorchingly hot, and interspersed with endearingly innocent affection. _I want your weight over me while your hands slide down to my hips. Tell me you love me, Magnus. I want to feel it._

“I love you,” Magnus says. He presses kisses to Alec’s throat, Magnus’s own addition to the fantasy.

“We’re so close, Magnus,” Alec whispers. “Come home.”

-

The sky in Alicante is a clear, flawless blue.

Alec is waiting for him when Magnus falls to his knees on the plaza flagstones. Magnus doesn’t even feel the impact. Nothing could possibly hurt him in this moment. 

Alec pulls him up and sweeps Magnus into his arms, spinning them in a laughing circle. Even with his feet on solid ground, Magnus feels weightless, like he’s walking on air. Magnus would have waited decades in Edom for this moment but he’s glad he didn’t have to. Their whole future is still stretched out ahead of them.

He clasps his hands behind Alec’s neck, crashes their lips together, and Alec tastes like water and comfort and _home._

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved! I’m also smilebackwards on [tumblr](https://smilebackwards.tumblr.com/post/624004769254621184/this-two-star-town-smilebackwards) and [Dreamwidth.](https://smilebackwards.dreamwidth.org/)


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